Second Chance at the Retreat

The gravel hadn't changed. That was the first thing I noticed when I stepped off the bus into the late August heat, the air thick with the smell of cut grass and sun-baked dirt. Seventeen years old, senior year, one last summer obligation before college applications swallowed my life whole. Except I wasn't seventeen. I was thirty-four, with a divorce behind me and a decade of therapy I was still paying off, standing in the exact same field where everything fell apart the first time. "Cady, move it or get run over," someone behind me said, and I turned to see a girl with bright copper hair and a duffel bag dragging on the ground. Marisol Vega. My best friend since seventh grade chemistry class, the one who taught me how to smoke behind the gym and never told my mother when I got caught. The one who stopped speaking to me two weeks after this retreat ended. "Cady," I repeated, testing the name on my tongue. It fit the way an old jacket fit. My name was Catherine Hart now, Catherine with a capital C and a clinical license, but here I was Cady again, and Marisol was looking at me with all the trust in the world. "We're in the same tent," she said, grabbing my arm. "I checked the list. Bunk 4, near the back. Apparently the counselor thinks we're troublemakers." "We are troublemakers," I said, and it came out perfectly, the way it would have come out when I was seventeen. The field was already full of students. Fifty of us, maybe sixty, all incoming juniors and seniors from three different schools, here for a leadership retreat that was supposed to teach us teamwork and discipline and whatever else they needed to prove the school board was doing its job. The real purpose was simpler. It was a holding pen for kids whose parents wanted them occupied until September. I found the command tent first. That was the trick. I knew the layout by heart because I had memorized it in the years after, tracing the path from the field to the trailers, from the trailers to the storage shed, trying to figure out where I should have said something. The tent was just like I remembered, a white canvas structure with a folding table and a map of the grounds. And there he was. Daniel Voss. He was younger than my memory had painted him. Maybe twenty-eight, with the kind of jaw that belonged on a recruitment poster and a smile that made the other girls stop talking. His credentials hung around his neck on a lanyard: certified youth instructor, licensed first responder, six years with the state parks service. The letters were crisp and official. I knew they were fake. He had been fired from the parks service for conduct, not promoted, and the certification had been issued by a company that dissolved two years later. "Attention, everyone," he said, and the field went quiet. "I'm Instructor Voss. You will address me as Instructor Voss or Sir. This is not summer camp. This is a leadership training program, and by the end of six weeks, you will either have earned your certificate or you will have washed out. There is no middle ground." Marisol leaned close to me. "He's hot," she whispered, and my stomach turned. I looked at her, at the copper hair and the crooked smile and the unbroken certainty that the world was a fair place. She had no idea. In the first life, she had been the one to catch his attention, and he had spent three weeks grooming her before he touched her. I remembered the exact date. September tenth, three weeks and two days from now. I remembered the way she had come to my tent after, shaking, and the way I had told her to report it and the way she had said no, because he had photographs and she was eighteen and she would be ruined. I had been a coward then. I had helped her bury it and I had watched her drop out of school six months later. "Cady," Marisol said, nudging me. "You zoned out. Are you okay?" "Fine," I said. I was not fine. I had a recorder in my boot and a folder of notes in my duffel, and I was about to do something that would either save her or destroy us both. That evening, we were assigned to work details. Marisol was placed on kitchen duty, which put her in the trailers near the storage shed, which was exactly where Voss liked to work late. I was assigned to the equipment shed on the other side of the field, sorting ropes and tarps and checking the first-aid kits. I found the first hook when I was counting antiseptic wipes. The kits were supposed to be inspected every morning. The log sheet showed Voss had signed off on them for the past week, but the wipes pack was still sealed and the expiry date was two years old. He had faked the inspection. It was small, but it was a c***k, and I filed it away. The second hook was larger. I found it in the storage shed, wedged behind a stack of folding cots. A box of unopened letters, all addressed to the retreat office from the previous summer, all from students who had filed complaints. None of them had been opened. None of them had dates older than the last week of July, which was when the current administration had taken over. The box was marked with a yellow tag: pending review. I photographed every letter with my phone, then put them back exactly as I found them. There were eleven. At dinner, Voss sat at the head table with the two other instructors and a woman from the school board named Helen Sarnes. She was the one who had signed his reference letter. I knew from the first life that she had been a friend of his family. I watched her laugh at something he said and I understood, for the first time, why nothing had ever happened to him. Marisol brought me a tray and sat across from me. Her face was flushed from the kitchen heat and her hair was escaping from its ponytail. "He came back to check on the kitchen after everyone left," she said, and I felt my jaw tighten. "He said I was doing a good job. He said he was going to put me on the leadership track." "That's nice," I said, and it almost sounded normal. "He said I had potential," she continued, and her voice was bright, and I remembered the exact way she had sounded when she told me she thought he loved her. "He said he could tell I was different. He said I was going to be special." I looked at her, and then I looked past her at the head table, where Daniel Voss was laughing and touching Helen Sarnes on the shoulder, and I made a decision. I was not going to wait three weeks. I was not going to wait three days. I was going to build the case file tonight, and by the time he made his move, I was going to have enough to destroy him and everyone who had ever protected him. But I had to be careful. He was watching the girls. He was watching all of us. And if I moved too fast, I would end up as just another unopened letter in a box marked pending review.